A neutral void

As I said, I’ve been working on Burdastyle’s Jan 2011 cover dress.  I was immediately drawn to the collar, and indeed it’s a great design feature.  And though the thought of making a bagazillion buttonholes in a knit was initially scary, they went in without issue through the aid of some lightweight fusible interfacing.

That is where the love ends for this dress.  I fully lined it (beautifully I might add) because the knit was too sheer to go without.  While the pattern certainly had enough ease despite it not being a pattern with a lining, it added far too much bulk in the final dress.  This pattern needs more drape because you have to style it with a belt.

About that ease…it shouldn’t surprise me that a dress with this line drawing

would end up being shapeless and kind of nightgownesque right?  Why do we forge on hoping for a better end?  With all the bulk in the middle, this dress ends up feeling uncomfortably matronly on me.  Perhaps a better belt would help…

But the worst by far is that the color of this dress makes my skin look positively jaundiced.  You think you’re doing yourself a favor getting something close to your skin tone (hey, it’s neutral, it’ll go with everything!), but I think in that range, you have to be 100% right with the color or it kind of voids you out.

On the upside, it is the nicest finished wadder I’ve ever made.

My full review is here.

Houndstooth dress!

Noah: Is that your new dress, Mommy?

Me: yes (grateful that I’m wearing a real garment instead of whatever summer heat has driven me to of late)

Noah: You look like the marshmallow.

Me: What? (plumbing the depths of 3 year old logic)….oh, right, the marshmallow.

My child, with his crazy memory for patterns of all sorts makes the connection to the beloved stuffed footstool that I silkscreened and sewed that we roll all over the basement.  I do not indeed look like an actual marshmallow.  Glad that he/I clarified that for me.

I’ve had this ITY in my stash for some time.  I bought it on a whim at fabric.com (when do you not buy on a whim at fabric.com?), happy to see one of my favorite patterns rendered in knit fabric.  When I got it, I was disappointed how thin it was and that it had almost a slinky texture to it.  I wanted to send it back but didn’t want to deal with it.  Instead I just put it off to the side somewhere.  When I came back to it, I concluded that I still love the pattern, and the blue is really lovely, so why not let it be a maternity dress?  It will get heavy use for the 1 or 2 seasons that I will use it for, and then I can pass it along.  Yes, my general preference is to make garments from nicer fabrics that will look nice for a long time, but periodically you just make a bad purchase, and it’s good to do make some quality lemonade out of it.

I pulled out Burda 6-2010-132 again because I had already made it and knew (in principle) that it worked for me.  The problem was I was never particularly thrilled with the fit of it…it seemed to pull away from my body along the sides.  I think my maternity strategy in the past has not been to sew for where you’re at but just to make everything enormous and hope for the best.  Ah, live and learn.

When I pulled out the tissue, I saw that I had traced a 34 in the neck and shoulders and a 38 below the armscye….no wonder.  32 is my magic Burda shoulder size, and after trying on the brown and aqua dress and confirming that it was indeed falling off my shoulders, I graded it down again to a 32 and came into a 36 on the sides through my torso and I kept the 38 in the hips.  I also did a small dartless FBA ala Louise Cutting (if you’re a Threads Insider, there’s a fantastic video for doing this–it allows you to add for the bust without adding to the waist or hips–awesome) to take care of the pregnancy crazy.

I just so happened to have the right color of blue to use as contrast (now I remember why I stocked up on solid knits).

My construction tip is to use quality clear elastic for the ruching in the side seams.  Shoot, use quality clear elastic whenever there’s gathered bits.  Monkeying around with it is worth the momentary frustration–it’s simpler, more even, stronger, and much better looking than anything you do with multiple rows of gathered stitches.

That silly empire line definitely makes me feel pregnant, but I’m nearly 26 weeks, so maybe it’s time, and maybe it’s okay.  At least I don’t look like an actual marshmallow.  As for the fabric–it sewed up really just fine, and once I put a slip under the dress, it’s quite lovely and feels as nice as any other ITY.

My full review of the dress is here.

St. Patrick’s Day dress

While thinking about the Wardrobe Basics Sew Along, I was at first sad to see an LBD on the list, but felt much better when the video segment included a print dress.  Print knit dresses are basics for me–I love that you can toss one on plus a great necklace and you’re done.  I feel like black dresses do nothing to express the aqua I feel in my soul, plus black is a really severe color against my skin and hair.

This particular dress is Burdastyle 6-2010-109.  It sewed up really easily (minus a little wonkiness in CF) and it fits fine (the neckline for being a Burda v-neck is not revealing at all) , there’s just one issue.  Um, the dress’ “parts” are not where mine are.  It’s not like I wasn’t warned.  But still, I decided to give this dress a shot because it took very little fabric and only has 4 pattern pieces.  I’m glad that this print is really busy because it hides a lot of the saggy weirdness below my waist, and I really like the color.  I sewed in some ties made from scraps into the side seams to cover the sags, but it’s really difficult to see it because of the print.

I’ve been making a lot of things with belts lately, but still this was a good and easy fix even if I’m the only one who knows the problem with this dress.

It also occurred to me that I didn’t need to bother with making another jacket (to replace the puffy vest which is a rather unappealing style to me) because this jacket that I made in the fall

works really well.  I wore it today to a dear friend’s baby shower with the dress.

My full review is here.  Have a good St. Patrick’s Day.  Wear something happy and green!

Feathered fireworks

Vogue 8663 has been in my queue for a long time.  This polyester knit from Fashionista Fabrics has  been in my stash also for a long time.  I love the lines of this particular pattern and I love the density and the pattern on this fabric that one day it hit me that they would be a perfect match for each other.

I wish I could say that this was a quick little sew, but the bodice took me a while to fit.  I was really unsure about the pleats…that’s not a feature I typically go for because I think they can be broadening on a full bust.  But these pleats looked a great deal more like darts to me and the pleats didn’t seem to be adding any bulk upstairs on anyone who has reviewed this pattern on PR.

In my muslin, the pleats really confused me.  At first I didn’t stitch them down, so they gaped and did all kinds of weird things that led me to believe that I needed to do an FBA.  I’ve said it before that FBAs create more problems for me than they help.  I have a small ribcage and a small waist, and FBAs add too much to the waist when usually because of my small ribcage I can just add a tiny bit just under the armscye to cover my bust.  I was really puzzled why this really common fix for me wasn’t working on this pattern…I even slashed across my bust point and figured that I needed 3/4″.  After tracing and retracing no less than 3 times and having zero luck coming up with a way to do an FBA without seriously distorting the bodice, it occurred to me that I hadn’t tried my muslin on with the pleats stitched down.  I zigzagged across my slash points and tried on the bodice one last time.  I’m so glad I thought to do that because it fit perfectly and saved me the headache of an FBA.  I did add 1/2″ to the bottom of the bodice in line with my bust point that I tapered back to the side seam and CF because the waist seam was riding up right there.  The 1/2″ of extra length fixed that issue.

I lined the skirt with some poly knit that I had that I’ve been using for knit muslins.  I had bought several yards of it at Denver Fabrics one day for 99 cents/yd.  It has the same stretch as my print fabric and it oddly was a good match colorwise.  The skirt was just a hair droopy without a lining, and my only slip is too big on me, so lining it was a quick solution.  I just sewed the lining and the outer skirt directly into the waist seam.

The only thing that I don’t like about this dress is that I can’t nurse in it.  I’m so used to nursing in whatever I’m wearing that I forget that there are actual physical limitations that have to be recognized.  As such, this dress will be left to be worn out with the girls (like the wine and dessert night I’m going to tonight at a friend’s) or on dates with my husband.  Whenever I’m done with this stage in my life, I’m wearing this dress into the ground.

My full review of this dress is here.

Instinct

I’m starting to understand how to use other patterns to make new patterns better/more successful for me.  I know now, for instance that Burda armscyes and me is happy-making and that Jalie’s drafting is exactly what I like in a t-shirt.

Ah, but when I pulled out this Butterick dress (I’ve been looking forward to making it since my second trimester), I didn’t even think to pull out my most favorite Vogue 1027 which has a similar crossover bodice.  It’s too bad because I could have saved myself a lot of time and headache.  Instead, I winged it, and actually believed what the pattern tissue told me.

What did the pattern tissue tell me?  That for a size 8, at the bust measures 43″ on the final pattern.  That’s 9.5″ extra for me.  I did not want to be swimming in that much fabric, so I took 1/4″ off of the side seam and folded out 1″ parallel to the grainline per Trena’s method for a SBA though I am a DD.  I had my doubts about this, but the tissue wouldn’t lie, would it, even though it didn’t look overtly large across the bust?  Theoretically, even with all of this, I’d still have plenty extra room.  Not so much.  It fits, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a little more room.  I haven’t flat pattern measured it, but my guess is it’s not close to 43″ even without changes.  In addition to this, the bodice is really short lengthwise.  I added 1″ to the bottom of it and subtracted an inch from all of the midriff sections (and there are many due to overlays, so this was an easy, but more time consuming fix), which would normally work fine for me on any given empire with a midriff bodice.  This one is still about an inch short.  I had a hunch it would be, but I ignored my instinct and forged ahead.  I could have easily pulled out another pattern with this construction to compare–and I should have given that the length of the bodice always needs to be longer, and midriffs always need to be shorter because my waist is so short.

Blargh.

I’m not horribly sad about this dress.  It’s still wearable, but it won’t get as much use as I had hoped.  It’s not tight, but I do wish that it had a little more ease, and I’m not crazy about the lack of shoulder coverage along the neck edge.  Garments that require undergarment strap adjustment are annoying and one of the first reasons I started sewing for myself in the first place.  And though I love the print, this is not the nicest quality ITY–it’s slightly metallic, so it has a kind of crunchy feel that’s less than lovely.  I think it’s still a good pattern–I think the less than stellar results were entirely user error.  As much as I sew knits, I know a nice length of something or other will come my way and I can try this pattern again.  And when I do, I will for sure be pulling out other patterns to help me.

My full review of this pattern is here.

Short little waists

I love the idea of a wrap dress.  How can a garment with no closures that you just toss on plus maybe a necklace not be appealing?  That you look like a lady in such a garment–bonus.

I’ve been watching some of Peggy Sagers’ webcasts for Silhouette Patterns because there’s some good info in them, and they’re free.  At any rate, I was watching the sheath dress draping one, and Peggy was wearing Diane’s Wrap Dress.  When she came to the sew expo in July, I picked up the pattern because it looked so darn cute on her and she was talking on the webcast about it not gaping at all.

I picked up some mystery mystery fabric.  I have no idea what this stuff is.  It’s a sateen weave, and maybe there’s some cotton, and there’s definitely a little lycra, but it’s kind of anybody’s guess what the rest is.  Not too keen to burn test, I decided that mystery fabric at $4/yd was good enough for me.

I was a little scared of a pattern that yields a finished garment of 38″ at the bust as the smallest size.  I was concerned it’d be too wide in the shoulders.  To my surprise it is really a good width across the shoulders–maybe a HAIR too wide, but close.  The waist, however is another story.  The finished garment size on the waist in the smallest size is 35″–my waist is 27″–at least when I checked about a month ago.  Even with added ease, that’s too much for my taste.  The hip size is also 38″–that IS my hip, so that wasn’t going to work (I went up two sizes there).

My dilemma is that there’s too much waist–it’s too long for me (if you look closely, you can see I really need to raise the position of the ties), so I folded out what I needed, but then how do you blend it all back together without adding even more at the waist or ending up with weird balooney things around the hips (from the front, it’s hard to see the ballooneys, but from the side–whoo!)?

The dress as it is is wearable, and I’m not blaming the pattern.  There is indeed no gaping, the collar looks awesome, and if a stiff breeze comes on by, you will absolutely not lose anything.  The pattern is extremely well written and it’s simple enough to do.  If you’re more of an H-shaped figure than an X who’s just slighlty A shaped like me, this is probably the wrap dress for you.

As for me and this pattern, I’m going to take it to my fitting group and try and figure it out.  This is not the first time I’ve had issues with princess seams and my short little waist and bigger hips.  I’m not going to review this pattern formally until I’ve figured it out because I want to be fair and because I do believe it’s a good pattern despite my current issues with it.

 

 

Sunshine dress

I forget about yellow as a color.  I like it, but I guess I gravitate towards other colors first.  But when I saw this Milly print from Emma One Sock, I was convinced that I need to pay more attention to yellow.  It’s just so happy!  I just so happened to have a gift certificate to EOS from my birthday and I had been haunting their site frequently to find just the right stuff.  I’ve become a fan of Milly too since I bought this fabric and also a pretty voile from Elliott Berman when they had their anniversary sale.  They make such adorable girly clothes–so this seemed a good pattern.

It being sweltering, this rayon knit is lovely and cool.  You all know I’m a knit addict, but they are too hot in the summer, but rayon is nice.  My beef with rayon knits is that most of them are wimpy, and the ones that aren’t (like this one) are super pricey.  Yay for birthday money!

The pattern is BWOF 02-2007-123.  I made it before in this peacock colored print.  I mistakenly put the wrap piece on top instead of beneath the full front piece on this one–it gives it a different look than the other dress, but I think I like the other one better as I can wear a belt.  A belt with this one is too much on my short waist with the short piece on top.

Overall, I’m glad I could pull off making such a happy summery dress before it got too cool to wear this.

My updated review is here at Patternreview.

Beating the heat

I’ve been enchanted with this Burdastyle 2-2011-101 since I saw it in February.

 I love the cap sleeve, and the retro styling and it just looked cool.

I’ve been wanting to make a sundress, and as I went shopping in my stash, I came up with a nice piece of voile that I bought last year from fabric.com and meant for another project that got nixed in the muslin stage.  The pattern calls for organza (cotton perhaps from the picture?), but that sounded far too warm for the 95+ temperatures we’ve been dealing with here lately.

To beef up the voile and keep down the wrinkling, I fused the bodice with Pro Sheer Elegance from Fashion Sewing Supply (lovely stuff if you haven’t tried it).  I cut out the interfacing at the waist darts which I lengthened and widened for my full bust.

Sandra Betzina was here for the sewing expo a couple of weeks ago.  I couldn’t muster up the nerve to ask her for a picture for the blog because I was so in awe of her as she poured out her knowledge and expertise non-stop for a solid 3 hours.  As she looked at my muslins, she mentioned doing a broad back adjustment for me.  Who knew?  The good news is that with that little bit extra, I don’t have to add as much across my bust!  And it does take out the teeny bit of wrinkling that I have never really noticed around the bottom of the armscye in back.  Still and all, by the time I added for the broad back and my full bust, I probably added more than I usually would have.  But again, a little extra ease helps with the heat.

As for the skirt, I was less enchanted with Burda’s suggestion of using two big rectangles and gathering them to fit at the waist.  To eliminate all that bulky, shapeless mess, I instead pulled out the skirt piece for Vogue 1027.  It hangs on the bias, and I had already fit it–well sort of…  Because the bodice is much closer to the bust in the Vogue dress and because it’s a knit pattern, I had to add at the side seams so that it fit the bodice.  I kind of guessed at 5/8″, but 7/8″ ended up being about right (I also folded out some of the flare in the skirt and added a CB seam because I despise side zippers).  I like this skirt much better–it still has a nice flow because it’s on the bias, but it lacks the bulk of the original pattern.

I wore it all day on Saturday and it kept me quite cool.  We took the boys up to Tiny Town , which is a huge collection of big doll houses–some furnished, some not.  There’s also a mini working steam engine.  Noah and Nathan rode it while Sam and I took pictures.  Sam did NOT like the train whistle, but we still had a good time.  Noah and I are here (of course) by the Opera House.

As a note, I would not recommend this dress for nursing–it’s possible, but not horribly practical.  My full review is here at Patternreview.

What is everyone sewing to stay cool?

Because I don’t wear red and green

Maybe I’m a rebel, maybe I just hate primary red and kelly green, but this year I decided I’d forego even trying to deck myself out in Christmas colors and wear something to play at church for Christmas Eve that is more me (because I’d rather think about the birth of my Lord than how much I hate wearing red and green).  Out of the fog of this chest cold I’ve had all week, my favorite palette of aquas seemed just perfect.

My hair’s still a little damp, so you can see a lot more of the red and less of the blonde.  The dress is version #2 of Burdastyle 06-2010-132 in a fun ITY from Denver Fabrics.  Something is up with the way the skirt drapes around my knees…I think it’s a compounded issue that starts at the ruching at the side seams.  I’ve been thinking it’s just static, which is never in short supply here in CO.  A few sprays of Static Guard revealed otherwise.  Next time I’ll make the skirt a little more A-line to compensate for that.

The cardigan is version #2 of Simplicity 2560.  I folded out ALL of the gathers on the lower sections of the cardigan and I made a different view (A) than I did before.  I really really like the streamlined look much better than the original.  It makes it easier to belt and takes away from the bulk that is already present due to le baby.

Noah’s sporting his sleeper I made for him from the leftover double knit I had from my skirt and some great baseball interlock I found.  I made a fast applique from some white interlock, backed with Heat ‘n Bond Lite and embellished with a tiny bit of hand embroidery.  The pattern (Butterick 5585) is just so-so. 

The leg and neck finishes are iffy at best, and the legs are really long (as you can see).  If I had been thinking, I would have traced off the sleeper that was in the December issue of Burdastyle as it looks like a much better pattern.  Oh well.  It’s baseball-y (which makes Nathan really happy) and the extra length means this one will last us until it gets warmer at night.

I will update my reviews when we get to Nathan’s parents and put up a new one for Noah’s sleeper.  Beyond that, I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas and a good start to the new year!

Versatility

When I went to go find something to wear for church this morning, I thought I’d pop on version 2 of my Vogue 1027 that I made in the spring.  Guess what people–it not only still fits, it’s way comfy, and now that I think about it, it’s a perfect maternity dress (no, I still haven’t hemmed it)!

The skirt is basically a circle skirt, so there’s plenty of extra room in front.  The waist seam really is an empire seam, but it’s not as apparent as the typical underbust empire seam because the ties are cleverly sewn into the waist seam.  The bonus of that for the pregnant lady is that while the waist seam is way above the tummy, that little tie gives some waist definition, so you get to look like a lady, not just a lumpy barrel that it feels like you become whilst pregnant!  I was just thinking yesterday how I’m so over gathers and voluminous maternity everything and I just want to look like my normal self.  I guess I found a good solution smiling at me in my closet this morning!